The Society of the Selfie: Social Media and the Crisis of Liberal Democracy

Abstract

This book explores how the Internet is connected to the global crisis of liberal democracy. Today, self-promotion is at the heart of many human relationships. The selfie is not just a social media gesture people love to hate. It is also a symbol of social reality in the age of the Internet. Through social media people have new ways of rating and judging themselves and one another, via metrics such as likes, shares, followers and friends. There are new thirsts for authenticity, outlets for verbal aggression, and social problems. Social media culture and neoliberalism dovetail and amplify one another, feeding social estrangement. With neoliberalism, psychosocial wounds are agitated and authoritarianism is provoked. Yet this new sociality also inspires resistance and political mobilisation. Illustrating ideas and trends with examples from news and popular culture, the book outlines and applies theories from Debord, Foucault, Fromm, Goffman, and Giddens, among others. Topics covered include the global history of communication technologies, personal branding, echo chamber effects, alienation and fear of abnormality. Information technologies provide channels for public engagement where extreme ideas reach farther and faster than ever before, and political differences are widened and inflamed. They also provide new opportunities for protest and resistance.

How to Optimize the Allocation of Anti-epidemic Materials in Public Health Emergencies From the Perspective of Public Economics

“…Driven by cultural genes, the people spontaneously distribute epidemic prevention supplies among their acquaintances, expanding the range of groups benefited and exerting greater positive externalities ( Morelock and Narita, 2021 ). Meanwhile, relying on its political trust, the government can stabilize people’s psychological expectations, restrain people’s panic buying behavior, and maintain the relative stability of the overall social order, which also brings positive externalities to the entire society.…”

The Nexus of QAnon and COVID-19: Legitimation Crisis and Epistemic Crisis

“…Conspiracies may be associated with such groups, who are then blamed for the failings of the system (Horkheimer and Adorno, 2009). In this sense, in periods of legitimation crisis, the tension of lifeworld versus system is likely to translate into tribalistic animosities, especially in times of a fractured public sphere with micro-publics and filter bubbles in social media (Morelock and Narita, 2021b). Authoritarian populist movements typically involve a combined hostility toward the ‘elites’ and those who are deemed as outsiders (Morelock and Narita, 2021a).…”

“…In this sense, emotions can reinforce conspiracy theories. Emotional persuasion spreads faster with the spectacle of digital media (Morelock and Narita, 2021b), generating indignation and promoting participation in public affairs. Political passions (Ansart, 1983: 8–9), especially in tribalistic contexts, are fed by cultural fragmentation and narrow dichotomies (like the populist divide between the elite/the people), so that emotional appeal tends to reinforce divisions with dramatizing or conspiracy theorizing trends (Ansart, 1983: 14–18) that interpellate individuals with sensationalism and popular resentment.…”

“…Broadly, though, we can point out that online platforms are notorious for facilitating filter bubbles, epistemic bubbles, and echo chamber effects, as well as for facilitating the spread of rumors, extreme perspectives, and trolling behaviors. On the Internet, the flood of voices claiming to know, and the cacophony of uncompromising factions claiming to be right, compound the epistemic crisis by contributing to a splitting of the public sphere, that is, a simultaneous process of fragmenting and narrowing of fragments in the direction of a plurality of 'homophilic assemblages' or zones of one-dimensional communication (Morelock and Narita, 2021b).…”

“…But as Dahlgren suggests, the postmodern insistence on perspectival multiplicity and wholesale rejection of universality may be complicit in facilitating the contemporary post-truth condition (Gasparatou, 2020). This, coupled with a widespread fixation on personal expression and its freedom-often to an 'invisible audience' over social media (Morelock and Narita, 2021b)-can only fuel the ascendance of emotionality over rationality.…”